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- lish many delightful flower still-life pictures. He influenced a number of artists studying in Europe like John Platt (1866-1944) and the Canadian artist, W. J. Phillips (1884-1963). He helped turn many of the paintings of Frank Brangwyn (1867-1936) into prints.
Landscape Prints
Shin hanga artists produced some of the most amazing, realistic landscape prints the world has ever seen. They were quite different from the tradi�tional prints of their ukiyo-e predecessors. All around the shin hanga artists were Western-style buildings and modern industries. What they tried to accomplish was to record the natural splendour and warmth of old Japan as it was disappearing at an astonishing speed before their very eyes. They held a great esteem for traditional buildings and the quaint settings of rural villages. They romanticized the life of the townspeople and their environ�ment and paid special attention to idealized scenes which depicted the magnificence of nature. They sought to restore Japan's picturesque tradi�tional scenery to the hearts and minds of the Japanese people and create a sense of pride in their country's heritage. They hoped their prints would be a visual remedy to Japan's speedy Westernization, especially in Tokyo.
Their prints were offered as an updated version of the traditional prints using Western-style concepts of space, light and volume. By using this synthesis of tradition and modernity, the shin hanga landscape artists hoped to create a new national identity for which the Japanese could be proud. They revisited the native ukiyo-e landscapes, but this time using Western artistic techniques and aesthetics in conjunction with Eastern sensibilities. The result was an incredible and unique amalgam of the best of two artistic worlds.
Of the successful shin hanga artists who produced landscape prints, two: Yoshida Hiroshi and Hasui Kawase, stand head and shoulders above everyone else. Both worked with Watanabe, but while Hasui remained with Watanabe and his staff, Yoshida in 1923 decided to become independent and hired his own staff of blockcutters and printers. They would become major rivals for the domestic Japanese market, while Yoshida tended to dominate the international market.
Yoshida was one of the most talented Western-style painters in Japan and had a number of successful exhibitions of his oils and watercolours in the U.S. He was inspired by Turner, Constable and the French Impressionists as well as being an admirer and critic of Whistler. Yoshida was influenced by the traditional beauty of ukiyo-e and was indebted to Hiroshige for his strong sense of design and skill at effective placement. He became keenly
AGGV COLLECTS/SHIN HANGA 13
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